Moomin: Building a Steampunk Maker Time Machine in Ten Easy Steps

Drawn & Quarterly has just released the fourth reprint volume of the Moomin cartoon series by the amazing Tove Jansson–and it starts out with a classic step-by-step introduction to the Steampunk Maker process. Note that Moomin papa is even wearing a Steampunk-appropriate hat. Truly, Jansson was ahead of her time…

#1 – Assemble your parts from the guts of other, broken machines.

#2 – Allow yourself a discovery phase based on what you’ve assembled.

#3 – Understand that a vital element of chance will enter your process.

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Comments

That’s great! Hope they didn’t end up in an End of Time menagerie shortly after however…

There appears to be a kite attached to the contraption, in the bottom left hand corner of frame #10 – could be for Franklin / Frankenstein style lightening-tapping which would be in keeping with the times.

I used to love the cartoon The Moomins when I was a kid although unfortunately I never got the chance to read the comics.

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer has been named the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) from FSG, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. The trilogy also prompted the New Yorker to call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 28 other countries, with Paramount Pictures acquiring the movie rights. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp . His forthcoming novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux is titled Borne. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...